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More "Dismally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dark flight of steps, damp and slippery. The ooze and slime rendered his footing tedious and insecure. Soon he recognised the mighty voice of Gideon bellowing forth a triumphant psalm. Another stave was just commencing as the door opened, and the torch glared lurid and dismally on the iron features and grisly aspect of the captive. A pair of rude stocks, through which Gideon's long extremities protruded, stood in the middle of the dungeon. He scowled terrifically at the intruders; but ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Penn's scheme, when traffic that he could not have imagined demanded wider streets. If he could have lived into our times he would surely have sent us very positive directions in his bluff British way to break up the original rectangular, narrow plan which was becoming dismally monotonous when applied to a widely spread-out modern city. He was a theologian, but he had a very keen eye for appearances ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... small dismal room that Michael had found he could afford to rent in a house on the edge of the alley. Not that he had moved there, oh, no! He could not have endured life if all of it that he could call his own had to be spent in that atmosphere. He still kept his little fourth floor back in the dismally respectable street. He had not gone to the place recommended by Endicott, because he found that the difference he would have to pay would make it possible for him to rent this sad little room near ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... to her from any book she desired; an offer involving no small degree of self-denial, for Sophia's books were very rarely interesting, or even intelligible, to her sister. But she lifted the nearest two, Barret's "Maga," and "The Veiled Prophet," and rather dismally asked ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... time to think up a story that will hold water, mon pere? I have that. I have the story. And yet—" He smiled a bit dismally. "I did make one pretty ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... of the hard beds; and when daylight came, journeyed steadily on again, over the vagabond little hills that had gypsied it so far into the prairie-land in their wanderings from their range on the Ohio, and, passing the hills, went on through the flat forest-land, always hunched over dismally in the creaking wagon. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... I knew has been swept away," he said. "All I can say is, the cave is in that direction," and he pointed with his hand. "But it may be buried out o' sight now," he added, dismally. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... club my friend had wished to avoid. Here, by malicious inspiration, they tilted the wain to one side and strewed the paving with their property. They skipped nimbly round the corner, and with highly satisfactory laughter watched their blushing partner labouring dismally to collect the fragments. Some of his friends issuing from the club lent a hand, and the joy of the ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... nightmare when I am at the old hut, and once I told Hannah I believed the house was haunted, for I heard strange sounds at night, soft footsteps, and moans, and whisperings, and the old dog Rover howled so dismally, that he kept me awake, and made me nervous and wretched, I don't remember what Hannah said, except that she made light of my fears, and told me that she would keep Rover in her room at night on the floor by her bed, which she did ever after when I was at ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... nature like a thrifty housewife sets the earth in order; and between taking up the white carpets and putting down the green ones, her various apartments are dismally dirty. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... the kitchen when Lisbeth entered and threw herself into the chair. She looked round with blank eyes at the dirt and confusion on which the bright afternoon's sun shone dismally; it was all of a piece with the sad confusion of her mind—that confusion which belongs to the first hours of a sudden sorrow, when the poor human soul is like one who has been deposited sleeping among the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... a trifle, and then agreed to fill the vacancy. There were those who shook their heads dismally when they saw Nick the trouble-maker in the line-up. Previous experiences warned them that the game was very likely to break up in a big row, for such had been the fate of many a rivalry when rough-and-ready Nick Lang entered ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... sitting-room, I found Somerled and Mrs. James gone. Barrie was alone with her newly found—sister, and a more forlorn little figure than our young goddess it would be hard to imagine. Andromeda chained to her rock could not have looked more dismally deserted by her friends. A room had been taken for her, and she was now transformed into Miss Barribel Ballantree. "What a good thing I wouldn't let her be called Barbara after me," said Mrs. Bal. "We should have had ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... some new ballads which she had just obtained from New York. Her father's indisposition was so slight that it merely called for those little attentions which are pleasant for affection to bestow and receive. The wind howled dismally without, only to enhance the sense of peace and comfort within, and at the usual hour all retired to rest, without even the passing thought that anything might disturb them before they should meet again at the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... was the distant landscape dotted over with pretty homesteads to relieve its desolation. Now, nothing was seen but the black patch of sterile moor on which they stood, nothing heard but the wind as it swept in gusts across the bare hill, and howled dismally through a stunted grove of trees that grew in a glen below them, except the occasional baying of dogs from the farmhouses in the distance. That they felt at ease, is more than could be expected of them; but as it would have shown a lack of faith in the protection of Heaven, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... one to tell me that now was my time; but it was with limbs that almost refused their office from sheer fright, that I crept past the sleeping man, and reached the edge of the wharf. There was the vessel moving very slightly, and groaning dismally as she moved, and there was the hole, and it was temptingly dark. But—the gangway that had been laid across from the wharf was gone! I could have jumped the chasm easily with a run, but I dared not take a run. If I did it at all it must be done standing. I tried ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... she looked out on the sea from her narrow window, it seemed to her dismally gray, moaning, restless, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... business-like concentration of mind which the imaginative girl might have overlooked or undervalued, but which the budding, thoughtful woman must needs recognize and respect. Nor will it seem strange, if, by contrast, it made the excitable Reuben seem more dismally afloat and vagrant. Yet how could she forget the passionate pressure of his hand, the appealing depth of that gray eye of the parson's son, and the burning words of his that stuck in her memory ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... door and tapped lightly. There was no answer, but somewhere within the house a dog howled dismally. The door handle yielded to his touch when he tried it, and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... with a wail which was dismally echoed by Rubens. Then, suddenly, in the darkness came a sob that was purely human, and I was clasped in a woman's arms, and covered with tender kisses and soothing caresses. For one wild moment, in my excitement, and the boundless faith of childhood, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... dogs, quite unconcerned at what was going on about them, being intent only upon following their trail of the morning back to the cabin, now fled toward home, howling dismally. ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... above him on a lonely branch, croaked dismally, till Andy fancied he could hear words of reproach in the sounds, while a little tomtit chattered and twittered on a neighbouring bough, as if he enjoyed and approved of all the severe things the raven uttered. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... and he once more pelted forward, Matcham trailing in the rear. To say truth, they made but poor speed of it by now, labouring dismally as they ran, and catching for their breath like fish. Matcham had a cruel stitch, and his head swam; and as for Dick, his knees were like lead. But they kept up the form of running with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the restaurant at which very good food is obtainable is the Pera Palace; but the hundreds of dogs that are allowed to infest the city for scavenging purposes, and who disgracefully neglect their business in order to bark and howl dismally all night, would ruin the best hotel in creation. Therefore, if in the summer, I should advise any man to go to the Summer Palace Hotel at Therapia, a few miles from the city, on the Bosphorus, which is perfectly delightful, and to run into ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... Oswald, dismally repentant, handed Castel Forte a letter to Corinne in which he begged permission to see her. In answer she declined the permission, but asked to see his wife ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... fiasco had become so usual that when they occurred he was no longer stirred into making amends. If Gloria protested—and of late she was more likely to sink into contemptuous silence—he would either engage in a bitter defense of himself or else stalk dismally from the apartment. Never since the incident on the station platform at Redgate had he laid his hands on her in anger—though he was withheld often only by some instinct that itself made him tremble with rage. Just as he still cared more for her than for ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... many feet; doors slammed at intervals, and once a raucous voice called loudly for "Towels for '53'"; from the room next his came the sound of talking and laughter; farther down the hall a young baby cried dismally. Through the babel of voices came the regular pink-pank of a banjo in the parlour below. Outside, the wind raged against the frosted windows, train-bells rang and whistles blew all night long, and the pounding of horses' feet on the pavement never ceased—there seemed to be one long ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... that Spiele would no longer bring them their lunch, and they would have to ride home. He gave no reason for this decision, and, when Victor glanced at him, did not look as if he were inclined to be questioned. Victor said it was all right, and stared dismally before him. Suddenly he took his cup and angrily spilled the coffee on the floor. He was convinced that Hoeflinger had learned of the incidents of the first noon and the second night of his absence, and that the change was due to them. So he was again to be punished. Hoeflinger had raised his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... when Darius of Persia did not need the bidding of a slave to make him "Remember the Athenians." He was taught a lesson on the battle-field of Marathon that made it impossible for him ever to forget the Athenian name. Having dismally failed in his expedition against the Scythians, he invaded Greece and failed as dismally. It is the story of this important event which we have next ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... spite of his nautical costume, was man of all work. He glanced dismally toward the garden border which lay basking in the sunshine under the wall that divided Villa Rosa from the rest of the world. It contained every known flower which blossoms in July in the kingdom of Italy, from ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... town quite in fairy-book fashion. Commonly referred to as the Chateau de Blois, it is really composed of four separate and distinct foundations; the original chateau of the counts; the later addition of Louis XII.; the palace of Francis I., and the most unsympathetically and dismally disposed pavilion of Gaston ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... death Grace had gone to see the last resting-place destined for him in the little village churchyard. It was a dreary patch of ground which looked as if the suns ray's never penetrated through its high walls on the graves below. Crumbling grey-lichened headstones peeped dismally from among the long dank grass, and the little paths were overgrown with weeds. Everywhere there were traces of unloving carelessness of the dead. And though Grace knew full well that the silent sleepers below little heeded this selfish forgetfulness, ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... open and close softly on the floor above; then slippered feet came pat-patting down the stairs. The wild rattle of the bell suddenly stopped; a muffled voice could be heard protesting dismally against the din. But suddenly the vague complaint gave way ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... it began to fall slowly and dismally as they drove along. The London streets looked unutterably draggled and dreary, seen at this early hour of the wet morning. The cab driver urged his horse to its utmost speed, and presently the broad green expanse and tall trees of Regent's Park came in view. Lady Helena gave the man ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... long list of proposed experiments dwindled and it became obvious that they were starting to work on brand new ideas. But brand new ideas are neither fast in arriving nor high in quantity, and time began to hang dismally heavy. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... up over my knees," confirmed Dave Darrin dismally, "and I believe it would be twice as deep before I'd been ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... Reuben, and if a fight should have to be made it would be early enough to begin it when she had her father definitely on her side, as she would have to-morrow. So she went into church and made strenuous efforts to attend to the service and the sermon, and failed dismally, and ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... The quiet of the hospital, the all-pervading odor of drugs, the subdued voice and quiet eyes of the head of the training school, as of one who had looked on life and found it infinitely sad, depressed her. She had walked home, impatient with herself, disappointed in her own failure. She thought dismally: ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had been overflowed recently. Their feet, no matter how lightly they stepped, sank in the mire, and when they pulled them out again the mud emitted a sticky sigh. An owl perched in a tree, high above the marsh, began to hoot dismally, and Shif'less Sol ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... are not such intense Catholics as the Catholics of Brittany and Poitou. After the Norman rising of 1793 against the tyranny at Paris had collapsed so dismally in the ridiculous 'battle' of Pacy—a battle which began with the flight in a panic from the field of the vanquished Normans, and ended with the flight in a panic from the field of their victorious enemies the Parisians—the indignant Bretons and the Poitevins marched ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the same day that Ena began to sneeze so dismally that the only place for her was bed. And when she could leave its seclusion the next only place was Palm Beach. She said she would die unless she could go to Palm Beach, so mother took her, and Peter took them both, not to speak of ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... dismally about the earthworks above them, as the reconnoitrers linger in the slight shelter the lower ground affords. They are about ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... blast through the loose windows, flapped dismally, and the people drew their wraps about them, for the fireless room was cold. Steadily, insistently, the hive-like drone of ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... wolves you ever saw here!" he called in warning, but almost simultaneously his chum's rifle sounded, and but seven wolves remained. Another and another went down to death and the five which were left, taking fright at last, sped away among the timber, howling dismally. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... He finished breakfast dismally, and blew through an empty pipe, staring lackadaisically out of the window at the wall of Sidney Sussex for two or three minutes before lighting up. Cambridge seemed an extraordinary flat and stupid place now that Frank was no longer ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... will have—and that's all that you'll have left," croaked the young chief engineer dismally. "Now, friends, is the game worth a candle of that sort? How many of you have money in the bank? Let every man here who has put up his hand. Not one of you? Who's keeping your money in bank for you? Jim Duff and the sellers of poisons? Will they ever hand your money back to you? Some ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... opposite. Half-way along that hill, through a narrow gap, I, standing on higher ground, could catch a glimpse of the grey ocean beyond, sending its white horses in on the land, and moaning with a cry that mingled dismally with the rush of the wind. Surely our long journey was ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... famous American romance-writer was in the room, and an enthusiastic English lady, a genuine admirer and intelligent reader of his books, ran for her album and attacked him for "a few words and his name at the end." He looked dismally perplexed, and turning to me said imploringly in a whisper, "For pity's sake, what shall I write? I can't think of a word to add to my name. Help me to something." Thinking him partly in fun, I said, "Write an original ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... crowded theatres laugh, and in the right place, too, for above forty years together, am I to make up the number of your dunces, because I have not the equal talent of making them cry too? Make it your own case. Is what you have excelled in at all the worse for your having so dismally dabbled in the farce of Three Hours after Marriage? What mighty reason will the world have to laugh at my weakness in tragedy, more ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... soil, at least—a not very vigorous looking forced growth through sordid necessity. In this respect it was like many, perhaps most, human aspirations—and, like them, it was far more likely to wither than to flourish. "Teachin' 's worse than preachin'"—Del began to slip dismally down from the height to which Arthur's tactless outburst had blown her. Down, and down, and down, like a punctured balloon—gently, but steadily, dishearteningly. She was ashamed of herself, as ashamed as any ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... you, Thomas," said Miss Davis; and Thomas seized Scamp in spite of Hetty's struggles, and carried him off, howling dismally. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... be, and whether we were going to work in the best way to find him; the next moment I was dreaming that Gyp had run after and caught a wild man of the woods by the tail, and had dragged him into camp, howling dismally. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... But in Trenton the Federal and Religious party had the upperhand, and when Paine applied at the booking-office for a seat to New York the agent refused to sell him one. Moreover, a crowd collected about his lodgings, who groaned dismally when he drove away with his friend, while a band of musicians, provided for the occasion, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... starlight was not dark, but shadowy and ghostlike, making the interval between two days a long-protracted dusk beneath which it was possible to see for miles. Far away in the forest a timber-wolf howled dismally; the huskies in the river-bed, seated on their haunches, lifted up their heads and echoed his complaint. Then all was still again, nothing was audible except the occasional low booming of the ice, when a crack rent its ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Latin or French!" sighed Fil dismally. "I wish I could go to a school where there isn't any homework, and that somebody would invent a typewriter that would just spell the words ready-made ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... closely watched, for Madame bristled and swelled like a mother cat about to spring at a strange dog, if any gentleman of the suite showed symptoms of accosting her. Nay, when Mr. Talbot once brought Diccon in with him, and there was a greeting, which to Cicely's mind was dismally cold and dry, the lady was so scandalised that Cicely was obliged formally to tell her that she would answer for it to the Queen. On Sunday, Mr. Talbot always came to take her to church, and this was a terrible grievance to Madame, though it was to Cicely ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hand, warm and wet with the thing whose taste set the wolf's heart on fire with the lust to kill, was thrust against his nose. He leaped back with bared teeth, growling horribly. The eyes commanded him back, commanded him relentlessly. He howled dismally to the senseless stars, yet he came; and once more that hand was thrust against his ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... cold meat are about all we can count on," he announced dismally. "There are only a half a dozen potatoes here. You might ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... the chapel, and the refectory. In the refectory, a vast hall where the tables still stood in their places, Roland noticed five or six bats circling around; a frightened owl flew through a broken casement, and perched upon a tree close by, hooting dismally. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Suddenly, as if exasperated by the non-obedience of the elements, Kawa Kendi sprang to his feet, with the magic wand in his right hand, turned and stared apparently into the face of the idol. For a full two minutes he stood as if carven, while the doctors and the chiefs moaned dismally. Around him like a pall still hovered the smoke of the magic fire. From the village a cock's challenge was answered from point to point. Then shooting out his right hand, Kawa Kendi made gestures as if hooking something invisible ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... trying to get something for Meg, who is very tired, and someone shook me, and here I am in a nice state," answered Jo, glancing dismally from the stained skirt to ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... the effort before him, he felt toward it as a man of weak unpractised muscle who endeavors with straining to raise a physical weight. He would make the effort, but it would tax his whole strength. As he strolled along the down, dismally smoking and pondering, he made himself contemplate the then and now—taking stock, as it were, of his life. In this truth-compelling darkness, apart from the stimulus of his mother's tyranny, he felt himself to be two men: one in love with Diana, the other in love with ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... large-tailed sheep and black goats, and blew into his flageolet, drawing from it, not music, only sounds without measure or rhythm, which the wind carried down the valley, causing the sheep-dog to rise up from the rock on which he was lying and to howl dismally. Near by the old man walked, leaning on the arm of the younger brother, a boy of sixteen. Both wore shepherd's garb—tunics fitting tight to the waist, large plaited hats, and sandals cut from sheep-skin. The old man's eyes were weak and red, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses and the heavy curtains, all affected my spirits. I was silent and sad from my childhood. There was a great clock tower above, from which the hours rang dismally during the day, and tolled like a knell in the dead of night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task of caring for her. He was a thin, dark man, with sad ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... with the Beasley library, which partially filled a shelf in the sitting room. But "The Book of Martyrs" and "A Believer's Thoughts on Death" were not cheering literature, particularly as the author of the latter volume "thought" so dismally concerning the future of all who did not believe precisely as he did. So the teacher laid down the book, with a shudder, and wandered about the room, inspecting the late Mr. Beasley's portrait, the photographs in splintwork ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to-day. Tumm, of the Quick as Wink, beat into harbor for shelter. 'Twas good to know that the genial fellow had come into Twist Tickle. I boarded him. 'Twas very dark and blustering and dismally cold at that time. The schooner was bound down to the French shore and the ports of the Labrador. I had watched the clouds gather and join and forewarn us of wind. 'Twas an evil time for craft to be abroad, and I was glad that Tumm was in harbor. "Ecod!" says he, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... also. Being thus left lonely in the world, he fell into the keeping of his uncle, Padre Juan, a grim priest who, having lost all happiness in life himself, saw little reason why he should seek to make the lives of others glad. Dismally the boy grew up in this narrow, cheerless home. The Padre fain would have made of him a priest also; but against this fate Pedro rebelled, and accepted, while yet a boy, the alternative means of livelihood ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... appearance that you have to make upon the college stage, in the presence of the great worthies of the State, and of all the beauties of the town,—Laura chiefest among them. In view of it you feel dismally intellectual. Prodigious faculties are to be brought ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... a child's hand. How had it come there? Grass and weeds were growing in the marketplace, and a millstone covered the village well. Here and there a lean and hungry dog crept forth at the horsemen's approach, howled dismally, and ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... position—the overhanging bluff was complete protection from any attack except along the open bank of the river. Two armed men could defend the spot against odds. And below, a hundred yards away, perhaps—it was hard to judge through that smother—the bare limbs of several stunted cottonwoods waved dismally against the gray sky. Hesitating, his eyes searching the barrenness above to where the stream bent northward and disappeared, he turned at last and tramped downward along the edge of the stream. Across stretched the level, white prairie, beaten and obscured by the storm, while ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... could see three or four white sails. Far away beyond a group of islands rose a trail of smoke that told some small steamer was passing. A gull was circling over the cove, and a black crow cawed dismally from the top ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... The inquiry so dismally recalled Leonidas's late feelings that his face clouded, and he involuntarily sighed. The stranger instantly shifted his head and gazed curiously at him. Then he took the boy's sunburnt hand in his own, and held it a moment. "Well, go ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... was shown in. That rooming-house parlor seemed to moan dismally as it received him. He strolled about and gazed at the objects of art which had at various times accrued to Mrs. Norton's personality: a steel engraving called Too Late, which depicted an angry father arriving at a church door to find his eloping daughter in the arms ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... am," assented Jimmy dismally. There was no doubt about where he was now, but where was he going to end? That was the question. "See here," he exclaimed with fast growing uneasiness, "I don't like being mixed up ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... could hear the drip, drip, drip of the rain outside the window; then a steam siren hooted dismally upon the river, and I thought how the screw of that very vessel, even as we listened, might be tearing the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... morning, the rain beating against the windows, and the canaries twittering dismally to each other—complaining, perhaps, of the bad weather. Robert could not tell how long the person had been knocking. He had mixed the sound with his dreams, and when he woke he was only half ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... several times, and I had begun to think of the Minotaur's labyrinth, when the passage knotted itself into a low-roofed room, open at both ends, save for bomb screens, with a trench leading dismally off from an opposite doorway. "When is a door not a door?" was a conundrum of my childhood, and I think the answer was: "When it's ajar." But nowadays there is a better replique: A door is not a door when it's a dug-out. It is then a hole, kept from falling in ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... everywhere for you," he said dismally. "I thought you had added to the general merriment by falling downstairs and ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sun had set in golden glory, dark and dense clouds had covered the heavens, the wind had risen and whistled dismally over the moor, and a shower of mingled rain and sleet blew into the shed, one side of which was open to the air. It was in the midst of this shower, that a tall gaunt female, covered with a ragged cloak, and having one child slung on her back, and another much older in her hand, presented ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... the rain was falling dismally, she received him with an embarrassment she could scarcely conceal. The usual heightened colour no longer gave youth to her cheek; an anxious frown knitted her candid brows; and there was no laughter in her eyes. He looked at her questioningly. Was anything ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... a dull book this would be, and how dismally it would drag its weary length along, if it weren't all about ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... car in pairs, the picnic basket's Rattling dismally, plate and spoon and jar. The boy takes his girl to her lodgings in ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... rocked and pitched about wildly as these animals appeared and disappeared, leaping from the waves all around me, diving under the boat and reappearing on the opposite side. They lashed the current with their strong tails, and snorted or blowed most dismally. For an instant surprise and alarm took such possession of me that not a muscle of my arms obeyed my will, and the canoe commenced to drift in the driving stream towards the open sea. This confusion was only momentary, for as soon as ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... sadly round the house, the window clattered dismally in its frame, the curtains tugged fretfully before the cold breeze which blew in at the broken pane. But the silence in the ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... heart's blood, and not being the greatest scholar in the world he has to count the letters in his name after it's written—he knows there ought to be nine together—and then he has to wipe the ink off his hands and sigh dismally and say if this thing keeps up he'll be spending his old age at the poor farm, and so forth. It all went according to schedule, except that he seemed strangely eager and ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... morning there was rain, and the air freshened, but the leaden sea lay level as before. The sun shone in the afternoon; with the sunset the fog came thick and white; the ship lowed dismally through the night; from the dense folds of the mist answering noises called back to her. Just before dark two men in a dory shouted up to her close under her bows, and then melted out of sight; when the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... visible from where I am; it rises behind and beyond the wall. I stay taking compass bearings and look for an easy way up for to-morrow. My men, by now, have missed their "ma" and are yelling for her dismally, and the night comes down with great rapidity for we are in the shadow of the great mountain mass, so I go back into camp. Alas! how vain are often our most energetic efforts to remove our fellow creatures from temptation. I knew a Sunday down among the soldiers would be bad for my men, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... across the campus, between banks of purple-shadowed snow and under leafless elms which creaked and groaned dismally in the wind, Kenneth reached the firm conclusion that there were two persons at Hilltop whom he was going to dislike cordially. One was the model Joseph Brewster, and the other was Mr. Whipple. The instructor was young, scarcely more than twenty-three, tall, sallow, ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... afternoon the amorous poet rode slowly up to the corral. As he sat limply upon his sorrel horse, smiling dismally at Ajax, we could see that the curl was out of his moustache, and out of the brim of his sombrero; upon his delicate face was ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... And if anything could have made him look more abject or more dismally ridiculous than before, it would have ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of smell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk; which made him turn Panurge about, and then he saw that his shirt was dismally bepawed and berayed with fresh sir-reverence. The retentive faculty of the nerve which restrains the muscle called sphincter ('tis the arse-hole, an it please you) was relaxated by the violence of the fear ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... ship; but I could not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily for that death which I thought nothing could defer beyond an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross—at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... path, and saw a forlorn woman tightly wrapped in a brown shawl, carrying a basket on her arm, and looking sadly down at her own calf-skin shoes, which squeaked dismally as she walked. ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... foundations, and the chapel fell in upon them. The sexton was killed, almost on the spot; his daughter was saved through the jamming of a piece of stone, and survived him as sexton for fifteen years. Another memorial is a brass kept in the vestry; a long screed begins dismally enough—"Ten children in one grave—a dreadful sight"; but the verse is unequal to the opportunity. Another brass shows Robert Skern and his wife Joan; she, according to Manning and Bray, was a daughter of Alice Perrers, mistress of Edward III. A fourth monument, said to be in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... swung from the sign post of the tavern, hanging like a malefactor in irons, was shaken and disturbed! Backwards and forwards the animal was tossed, like a bark upon the ocean. Now he seemed as if about to turn a somerset and circumnavigate the beam from which he hung, creaking and groaning dismally all the while, like an unhappy soul in purgatory. The loose shutters of the upper story of the tavern chattered like the teeth of a witch-ridden old crone. But cheerful fires of hickory and maple were burning within doors; a merry group was gathered in the old oak parlor, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... ordered Sophy, as a still further punishment, to be locked up in her own room till the Sunday following. This was on Friday, and Sophy had two days of solitude and imprisonment before her. The first day she passed very dismally, but yet not unprofitably, for she felt truly ashamed and sorry for her fault, and made many good resolutions of endeavoring to cure herself of her mischievous propensity. The second day she began to be somewhat more composed, and by ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... smoke, two clever amateurs took their places at the piano, and sang and played to their heart's content, while the rest, glass in hand, talked and laughed, or listened as they chose. Bartley had not been called upon, but he was burning to try that song in which he had failed so dismally in the logging-camp. When the pianist rose at last, he slipped down into the chair, and, striking the chords of the accompaniment, he gave his piece with brilliant audacity. The room silenced itself and then burst into a roar of applause, and cries of "Encore!" There could ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... out my own pipe now. "But what's the use. She is a Princess. Why, I thought her at first a barmaid—a barmaid! Then I thought her to be in some way a lawbreaker, a socialist conspirator. It would be droll if it were not sad. The Princess Hildegarde!" I laughed dismally. "Dan, old man, let's dig out at once, and close the page. We'll talk it over when ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... That was where our picks tore out the last bit of coal in the seam. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I myself gave that last blow, and it re-echoed in my heart more dismally than on the rock. Only sandstone and schist were round us after that, and when the truck rolled towards the shaft, I followed, with my heart as full as though it were a funeral. It seemed to me that the soul of the mine was going ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... would-be partners thronged round her at once, and prest to have the honor to dance with her. But she said she was engaged, and only going to dance very little; and made her way at once to the place where Emmy sate quite unnoticed, and dismally unhappy. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... or north; newsboys, eager to get rid of their last batch, were crying as usual, 'Ech-ow! Exteree speciul! Ech-ow! Steendard!' and a brass band was blaring out its saddest strain of merry dance-music. The lights gleamed dismally in rain-puddles and on the wet pavement. With the wind came whiffs of tobacco and ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... storm continued. The windows and casements shuddered spasmodically, and the festive horn and cherubs creaked dismally on the rusted hinges. The early watch passed by, banging their staffs on the cobbles and doubtless cursing their unfortunate calling. Two of them carried lanterns which swung in harmony to the tread of feet, causing long, weird, shadowy legs to race back ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into a steady blow. The few foot passengers astir in that quarter hurried dismally and silently along with coat collars turned high and pocketed hands. And in the door of the hardware store the man who had come a thousand miles to fill an appointment, uncertain almost to absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... decision was coming nearer, the alternatives loomed up dark and inevitable. On one side was submission to ignominy, on the other a return to that place which he detested, and yet loathed himself for detesting. "It seems I'm not likely to have much peace either way," he reflected dismally. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the rash invader hurried from the chamber of the talisman, his courtiers flying with wild haste to the open air. The brazen gates were closed with a clang which rang dismally through the empty rooms, and the lock of the king was fixed upon them. But it was too late. The voice of destiny had spoken and the fate of the kingdom been revealed, and all the people looked upon Don Roderic as a ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... night, however, their true condition as prisoners seemed to be impressed on them. Possibly they thought of their slain friends, for they began to moan dismally, and it was all Tupia could do to comfort them. Next morning they devoured an enormous breakfast, after which they were dressed, and adorned with bracelet, anklets, necklaces, etcetera, and sent on shore in the ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... but, loving "Mr. James" as they did, sympathized with her morbidness. So, in the old farmhouse, it was as though Jimmie still stamped through the halls, or from his room, as he dressed, whistled merrily. In the kennels the hounds howled dismally, in the stables at each footstep the ponies stamped with impatience, on the terrace his house dog, Huang Su, lay with his eyes fixed upon the road waiting for the return of the master, and in the gardens a girl in black, wasted and white-faced, walked alone and rebelled that she ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... very decidedly, and, taking Billy's arm, away they went, leaving poor Bab and Sanch to watch them out of sight, one sobbing, the other whining dismally. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... fancying in Europe. Why, I can remember when I used to imagine that American tourists figured brilliantly in salons and conversazioni, and spent their time in masking and throwing confetti in carnival, and going to balls and opera. I didn't know what American tourists were, then, and how dismally they moped about in hotels and galleries and churches. And I didn't know how stupid Europe was socially,—how perfectly dead and buried it was, especially for young people. It would be fun if things ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... high relief of white and liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose. Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection: being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting down on the part of some corpulent ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... them with its two glaring gig-lamps, and slapped up the mud on to their cheeks. A mule wagon, trotting up behind, splashed it into their back hair, where they found it in dry beads of assorted sizes next morning. It was raining dismally. The head of the column was commenting richly on its surroundings—the platoon at the tail had ceased to comment at all. The last couple were a pair who, I will swear, must have tramped together many a long road over the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... proffered hand (rather good that, Jerry. Let's have it again. I say I brushed aside his proffered hand), and strode back dismally to what had once been my home ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... from the Village as he crossed the dim courtyard toward the light that shone palely from Silvertip's window. As he entered the cabin the Swede, still nursing the broken head that kept him from participating in the Potlatch festivities, groaned dismally in greeting. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... giant liner which, under a full head of steam, vibrated with suppressed energy, straining at mighty cables as if impatient to start on her long and hazardous voyage across the tumbling seas. A raw, piercing northeaster, howling dismally above the monotonous creaking and puffing of the donkey-engine, swept through the cheerless, draughty dock, chilling the spectators to the marrow. The sun, vainly trying to break through the banks of leaden-colored clouds, cast ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... though death had already closed about him. The guard-room seemed to become a funeral chamber, with a mass of hovering shadows for a pall. The fire held up funeral tapers of flickering flame, and the whispers of the starving men who warmed themselves in its heat broke the silence as dismally as the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... cried Amy. "Your father is a dear! it's the one fear that has haunted me—lest some visionary incompetent should attempt it, and should fail dismally, and all the great world of business should visit our methods with the scorn due only his incompetence. It was our great danger! And now it is no longer a danger! You can do it, Bob; you have the knowledge and the ability and the energy—and ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... signature: those two names coupled together, discovered hidden in the book of hours; that relic in which the poor queen's desperate appeal had slumbered for more than a century: that horrible date of the 16th of October, 1793, the day on which the Royal head fell: all of this was most dismally and disconcertingly tragic. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... his house was finished he used it at its full value. Summer was gone and autumn was coming, a great rain poured and the wind blew cold. Dead leaves fell in showers from the trees, and the boughs swaying before the gale creaked dismally against each other. But it all gave to Henry a supreme sense of physical comfort. He lay in his snug hut, and, pulling a little to one side the heavy buffalo robe that hung over the doorway, watched the storm rage through the wilderness. He had no sense of loneliness, his mind was in perfect ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... abortive breakfast on the table, and the precious silver forks, and the old bronze image, keeping its solitary stand upon the mantelpiece. Then, methought, the wretched Vigwiggie came, and jumped upon the window-sill, and clung there with her fore paws, mewing dismally for admittance, which I could not grant her, being there myself only in the spirit. And then came the ghost of the old Doctor, stalking through the gallery, and down the staircase, and peeping into the parlor; and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Dismally barren and lonesome was that desolate bar between the bay and the ocean. Here and there it swelled up into great drifts and mounds of sand, which were almost large enough to be called hills; but nowhere did it show a tree, or a bush, or even a ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... did not like the look of the owl's great round shining eyes, as they peered at them, under the tufts of silky white feathers, which almost hid his hooked bill; and their hearts sunk within them, when they heard his hollow cry, "Ho, ho, ho, ho!" "Waugh, ho!" dismally sounding ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... "But for all the good I get of her, she might as well live on the top of the Cornobastone," he added dismally. "Yes, now you may bring me my coffee—only, let it be tea. When your coffee is coffee it keeps ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... draughts of water, which he begged at the cottage-doors by the road-side. When the night came, he turned into a meadow; and, creeping close under a hay-rick, determined to lie there, till morning. He felt frightened at first, for the wind moaned dismally over the empty fields: and he was cold and hungry, and more alone than he had ever felt before. Being very tired with his walk, however, he soon fell asleep ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... and Newman hardly knew what to say to him. The old man looked dismally foolish. "So you determined not to shoot her, after all," Newman ...
— The American • Henry James
... morning even the thought of the island failed to charm. Philip straggled away to the window and looked out dismally at the soaked lawn and the dripping laburnum trees, and the row of raindrops hanging fat and full ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... gathered to await the signal to begin; they had good rifles and a plentiful supply of ammunition, and their tethered steeds standing about the old "Wigwam" were pawing and neighing for the fray. The clock in the old Presbyterian Church on Orange street dismally tolled out the hour of three. Teck Pervis arose, yawned, walked up and then down the floor among the men who lay asleep with their weapons beside them. He made a deep, long, loud whistle; the men began to arise one after ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... all his confidence in the righteousness of his cause, to keep his heart from fluttering with fear as they stepped along beneath the gloom of the trees, which even when not in leaf cast dense shadows around them. It was in truth a weird spot: owls hooted dismally about them, bats flitted here and there in their erratic flight, and sometimes almost brushed the faces of the boys with their clammy wings. The strange noises always to be heard in a wood at night assailed their ears, and mingled with the quick beating of their own hearts; whilst from time ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sorry for you!" And Arbroath shook his bullet head dismally. "You are one of the unregenerate, and if you do not amend your ways will be among ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... I suppose," said the doctor dismally. "Potatoes and damper! Oh, boys, I did think you would have had a dish ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... thus dismally shrouded, the prospect was not obscured. Down in the valley of the Rhone behind them, the stream could be traced through all its many windings, oppressively sombre and solemn in its one leaden hue, a colourless waste. Far and high ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... with her large dark eyes, and then, all at once, she remembered Dandy, her husband's terrier, who, after his master's tragic death, had refused all food, and had howled so long and so dismally that, in a fit of temper, she had herself ordered him to ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... in this and in the whole aspect of the place which astonished me greatly. If this sombre dwelling with its rich but dismally dark halls and mysterious recesses could be said to ever wear an air of cheer, the attempt certainly had been made to effect this to-day. From the hand of the bronze figure that capped the newel-post hung wreaths of smilax and a basket full of the most exquisite flowers; while ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... he said dismally. "I shan't hear you again, unless, perhaps, the echoes have kept ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fatal spot. A French missionary, however, passing by stopped to dig a hole in the black, soft earth; and so the poor disfigured clay found at length its lonely resting-place. That night we made our first camp out in the solitudes. It was a dark, cold night, and the wind howled dismally through some bare thickets close by. When the fire flickered low and the wind wailed and sighed amongst the dry white grass, it was impossible to resist a feeling of utter loneliness. A long journey lay before me, nearly ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... a man of infinite resource, Capataz," said Dr. Monygham, dismally. "I recognize that. But the town is full of talk about you; and those few Cargadores that are not in hiding with the railway people have been shouting 'Viva Montero' on ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the room. Only the breathing of the dog upon the mat came through the deep stillness, like the pulse of time marking the minutes; and the steady drip, drip of the fog outside upon the window-ledges dismally testified to the inclemency of the night beyond. And the soft crashings of the coals as the fire settled down into the grate became less and less audible as the fire sank and the ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... by a shock, so sudden and severe that if Dorothy had not been lying on the soft bed she might have been hurt. As it was, the jar made her catch her breath and wonder what had happened; and Toto put his cold little nose into her face and whined dismally. Dorothy sat up and noticed that the house was not moving; nor was it dark, for the bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the little room. She sprang from her bed and with Toto at her heels ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Ashby, as they sat dismally and watched all the fun, wondered if the time would ever come when they would feel as much at home as all this. It was a stretch of ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... crept toward me dismally, and the pallid light of the hills was stretched in weary streaks away from me. How I arose, or what I did, or what I thought, is nothing now. Such times are not for talking of. How many hearts of anguish lie forlorn, with none to comfort them, with all the joy of life died ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... would be shared by every Jew in that festive aggregation around him. His heart sank. Never—even in those East End back-rooms where the pitiful disproportion of his consumptive-looking collaborators to their great task was sometimes borne in dismally upon him—had he felt so black a despair as in this brilliant supper-room, surrounded by all that was strong and strenuous in the race—lawyers and soldiers, and men of affairs, whose united forces and finances could achieve almost anything they set ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of disappointed anguish escaping her lips. The candle had burned out in the grease cup, the wind was rocking the shanty and making the rafters creak dismally. Tess shivered as she tossed her clothes upon the floor, and crept exhausted into Daddy's bed. The last thing she heard was the splashing of her pet eel ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... them all out to-morrow,' said Ellen dismally; 'I must wait till dark, or I shan't set a stitch of work. I wish people would pay ready money, and then one wouldn't have to set down their bills. Here's Mr. Cope, bread—bread—bread, as long as ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... suicide of her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial effects of the "silent tomb," and in this cheerful contemplation drove most of the children into speechless horror, and caused the pink-and-white scions of the first families to howl dismally and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... wouldn't dhrame to be puttin' ye about that much; the poor little fellows might be gettin' their deaths o' cold on ye. Indeed it doesn't matther where we go; we are a throuble to every wan. I wisht the Lord 'ud take us out of it altogether," she added dismally; "I'd sooner be in the old gully-hole at wanst nor be goin' to the poorhouse, and, dear knows, that's ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... make life desirable. She had never loved another; she would put away her love for him at the bottom of her heart and hold it sacred there. The rain had ceased; a flock of crows that circled above the three trees, croaking dismally, affected her like a menace of evil. Was he to be taken from her again, her cherished dead, whom she had recovered with such difficulty? She dragged herself along upon her knees, and with a trembling hand brushed away the hungry flies that were ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... have done this?" asked Roy, who had not a word of reproach for his chum, although Jimsy had failed dismally ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... I came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken possession. Two dismally absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch done up in a black bandage,—as if that instrument could possibly communicate any comfort to anybody,—were posted at the front door; and in one of them I recognized a postboy discharged from ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Augustus, that once dominated the ancient city and harbour below. Within, the cathedral of Proculus, who was a companion of St Januarius and a fellow-martyr, is gaudy and painted, one of those dismally gorgeous ecclesiastical interiors that are such a disappointment to the antiquarian in Southern Italy. In opposition to the memorial of Spanish conquest in the square below, we find here an elaborate monument to a French viceroy, the Duke of Montpensier, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... When I reached No. 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and patched with old scraps of oil cloth—a hall that sank under one's feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light — two inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that burned blue, and sputtered, and got discouraged and went out. The porter lit it again, and I asked if that was all the light the clerk sent. He said, "Oh ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... like that,—cold, ugly, driving thoughts. Looking out at the bleak country through which they were passing he saw that dead leaves were hanging forlornly to bare trees. His hopes were like that,—a few dead hopes clinging dismally to the barren tree of experience. So it seemed to Dr. Parkman as he looked from the car window at the country of hills and hollows through which he was passing. The out-lived winter's snow still in the ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... Grenard Pike in their childhood. The plastered walls of the tenement in many places had given way, and the broken windows were filled with pieces of board, which, if they kept out the wind and rain, dismally diminished the small portion of light which found its ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... yesterday, Nat," returned Mrs. Evringham dismally. "Yes. We shall not be able to go to your mother's, as I had hoped. Some time during the season I shall try to look in on her of course. You tell her so, Nat, when ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... remarkably cheerful voice, but the appalling magnitude of three years could not be diminished, and the three little sisters who were to stay behind with Aunt Raby were still disposed to view things dismally. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... groaned the lion dismally. Just then the darkness lifted as suddenly as it had fallen, and Dorothy saw him leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. There was a big bump on his head. With a little cry of sympathy, Dorothy hurried ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... be printed about her. Now and then she would be found dead in a river or would be traced as a white slave drugged and sold and shipped to the Philippine Islands. The stories were heinously cruel to her father and mother, who mourned her in Nimrim and repented dismally of their harshness to the best and pirtiest girl ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... His glance went dismally over the bare stretches he had used for his field. The wind had levelled the loose dirt over the tracks, so that the field looked long deserted and added its mite to his depressed mood. He hesitated, almost minded to turn back. What was the use of tormenting himself further? But then it ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... language, and after a moment, all being quiet, I crawled to the edge and looked over. His last struggle had split Harrison's tunic and pulled it clean off his back; and now, with his shirt-tail trailing dismally in the Ooze, he was making the best of his own way to the dressing-station, ungratefully consigning his gallant rescuers to complete and lasting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... aside his proffered hand (rather good that, Jerry. Let's have it again. I say I brushed aside his proffered hand), and strode back dismally to what had once been my home ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... I tell you?" groaned Peggy dismally. "Who looks better now, you or I? I look 'beautiful,' don't I, perfectly beautiful! It's so becoming to have no collar band, and one's arms sticking out like flails! I sha'n't be able to eat a bite. It's as much as I can do to sit still, much less move about. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... the frying pan, and the disappointed children gathered about the table, trying to look cheerful, but failing dismally. ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... still the white plain about them mounted slowly and surely towards the skies. Then the passengers became yet more weary and unhappy. Old Woollen, the unfortunate, detailed his woes to more and more appreciative audiences. Even the Funny Man—with a fresh flask of whiskey—sighed almost dismally between frequent uneasy "cat-naps." And Samson Newell, first seeing his wife comfortably settled, and his little ones safely disposed about her, strode up and down, from car to car, with a gloom of disappointment on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... down—a night which with snow and starlight was not dark, but shadowy and ghostlike, making the interval between two days a long-protracted dusk beneath which it was possible to see for miles. Far away in the forest a timber-wolf howled dismally; the huskies in the river-bed, seated on their haunches, lifted up their heads and echoed his complaint. Then all was still again, nothing was audible except the occasional low booming of the ice, when a crack rent its path across the surface and far below ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... exception of Luffree (who could not be found), had been chained up along the sunny side of the house to keep them from following her. And as they saw her disappearing across the reservation road, they jumped back and forth, pulling at their collars and howling dismally. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Berwick, we had to go round through the hills by Kelso, as there was a block on the main line. I knew nothing of this, and you may imagine my bewilderment when I came to myself, the train standing and whistling dismally in the black morning, before a little vacant half-lit station, with a name up that I had never heard before. My fellow-traveller woke up and wanted to know what was wrong. "O, it's nothing," I said, "nothing at all, it's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it!" thought Tom, dismally. "I suppose he'll wake up every morning, and predict that before night the world will come to an end, or he'll prophesy that the airship will blow up, and vanish, when about seven miles above the clouds. Well, there's no way out of it, so ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... impatiently, and her face fell into lines of discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs. Sheridan changed the subject to the one of a cousin of Harry Redding, one Mrs. Barry with whose problems Norma was already dismally familiar. Mrs. Barry's husband was sick in a hospital, and she herself had to have an expensive operation, and the smallest of the four children had some ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... windows and casements shuddered spasmodically, and the festive horn and cherubs creaked dismally on the rusted hinges. The early watch passed by, banging their staffs on the cobbles and doubtless cursing their unfortunate calling. Two of them carried lanterns which swung in harmony to the tread of feet, causing long, weird, shadowy legs to race ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... were placed in flat bottomed boats, which silently dropped down the current. It was intended to land three miles above Cape Diamond, and then ascend to the high grounds above. The current, however, carried the boats down to within a mile and a half of the city. The night was dismally dark, the bank seemed more than ordinarily steep and lofty, and the French were on the qui vive. A sentinel bawled out, "Que vive," who goes there? "La France," was the quick reply. Captain Macdonald, of the 78th Highlanders, had served in Holland, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... fain to laugh, so dismally did the broad-shouldered Mercian blame himself. But the bishop said that if I went, needs must that he came also. But he did not dissuade ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... have been impossible for us to have kept our feet; we crouched down under the shelter of a heap of stones, and, as we informed each other, looked most dismally pale. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... classical complexion: in C minor, op. 4, and it was composed as early as 1828. Not published until July, 1851, it demonstrates without a possibility of doubt that the composer had no sympathy with the form. He tried so hard and failed so dismally that it is a relief when the second and third sonatas are reached, for in them there are only traces of formal beauty and organic unity. But then there is much Chopin, while little of his precious essence is to be tasted in the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... her large dark eyes, and then, all at once, she remembered Dandy, her husband's terrier, who, after his master's tragic death, had refused all food, and had howled so long and so dismally that, in a fit of temper, she had herself ordered him ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... me! how he began to show his great rows of teeth, and growl at Gipsey! Nelly gave a little scream, and tried to hide behind me; Jimmy valiantly flew at the big dog with my walking stick; and poor little Gipsey nearly stood on the end of his tail with fright, and squealed dismally. What a fuss we were all in, to be sure! So at last, to quiet the disputants, I caught Gipsey up, and put him in my coat pocket, where he sat, looking out at the top, ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... water. This was repeated several times, but no arguments would induce her to allow her wet clothes to be removed, so it would not be surprising if this gentleman had succeeded in 'stopping her tongue' beyond his expectations. The only other lady was young and rather pretty, but dismally sentimental. She doated on roses, was enamoured of camelias, and loved the moon and the stars, and in fact everything in this world or out of it. In vain I tried to persuade her that her cough betrayed pulmonary ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... house; Johnson sat on one side of me, and Burke on the other; and in the company there was a young female (Mrs. Piozzi named her), to whom I, in my peevishness, thought Mr. Thrale superfluously attentive, to the neglect of me and others; especially of myself, then near my confinement, and dismally low-spirited; notwithstanding which, Mr. T. very unceremoniously begged of me to change place with Sophy ——, who was threatened with a sore throat, and might be injured by sitting near the door. I had scarcely ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... India. If the Cabool Troops have perished, England has not received such a blow from an enemy, nor anything approaching it, since Buckingham's Expedition to the Isle of Rhe. Walcheren destroyed us by climate; and Corunna, with all its losses, had much of glory. But here we are dismally injured by mere Barbarians, in a War on our part shamefully unjust as well as foolish: a combination of disgrace and calamity that would have shocked Augustus even more than the defeat of Varus. One of the four officers with Macnaghten was George Lawrence, a brother-in-law ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... one florin richer. A third game was in progress, but Todd managed to tip over the board when he was "going to mate in five moves." Cotton thereupon said he had had enough, but Gus avariciously tried to reconstruct the positions. He failed dismally, and Cotton laughed sweetly. Now Cotton's laugh would almost make his chum's hair curl, so he retorted pretty sweetly himself, "I say, Jim. I can't get out of my head that awful hammering you fellows got this afternoon. Think ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... which divested of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face though not at all ill-looking. He was feeling more strongly than ever that Timothy's was hopelessly 'rum-ti-too' and the souls of his aunts dismally mid-Victorian. The subject on which alone he wanted to talk—his own undivorced position—was unspeakable. And yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else. It was only since the Spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hue. All this time there was not a breath of wind save what was created by the schooner as she rolled heavily on the gathering swell; not a sound save those which arose within her as the bulkheads and timbers creaked and groaned dismally, the cabin-doors rattled, the rudder kicked as the water swirled and gurgled about it and under her counter with the heave of her, and the jerk of the spars aloft, or the slatting of the braces as she swayed, pendulum-like, from side ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... now. "But what's the use. She is a Princess. Why, I thought her at first a barmaid—a barmaid! Then I thought her to be in some way a lawbreaker, a socialist conspirator. It would be droll if it were not sad. The Princess Hildegarde!" I laughed dismally. "Dan, old man, let's dig out at once, and close the page. We'll talk it ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... of a tall tree the ape-man clawed his awkward way and after him came Numa, the lion, moaning dismally. At last Tarzan stood balanced upon the very utmost pinnacle of a swaying branch, high above the forest. He could go no farther. Below him the lion came steadily upward, and Tarzan of the Apes realized that at last the end had come. He could not do ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fail in the exact performance of any of his promises, to enforce them by compulsion of arms or any other method they might think fit. This precious document was signed on September 28, 1499 just twelve months after the agreement which it was intended to replace; and the Admiral, sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered on the fruits of a year's delay. Even then he was trying to make excuses for himself, such as he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried to explain that this shameful capitulation was invalid. That he signed under compulsion; that he was on board a ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... figure affected Trenchard very dismally and drove all his English common sense away. We were moving now slowly through clouds of dust, and peasants who watched us from their doorways with a cold indifference that was worse ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... It was too dark to see much. A multitude of steamboats and mahailas lined the shore. The river was in flood and looked black and forbidding, and it was impossible to see across to the other side. The only light was supplied by a few electric lamps at intervals along the road. It still rained dismally and we made for a canteen close at hand. Here we felt quite at home, for there were several other arrivals as muddy as we were and even worse. Considering this was only a restaurant attached to a rest camp, we fared very ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... have dismally continued, "it will be a queer mixture: these simians will attain to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that is plain. But after spending centuries groping to discover some art, in after-centuries they will now and then find it's forgotten. How incredible it would seem ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... wings of the intruding, out-of-season wind came a train of ills. Young Tucker Poteet waked at daylight and howled dismally with a pain that seemed to be all over and then in spots. When he went to take down the store shutters Mr. Crabtree smashed one of his large, generous-spreading thumbs and Mrs. Rucker's breakfast eggs burned to a cinder state while she tied it up in camphor for ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... poor Esther. She felt that she must get away at once or she would burst into heartsick tears under those steely, bland blue eyes. When she got home she shut herself up in her room and cried. There was nothing for her to do but resign, she thought dismally. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hundred fires were blazing. Around them figures were moving like Indians, whose faces the flames lit up with ghastly distinctness. The neighboring wood was made visible and gloomy at once by the fires under the trees, the foliage reflecting the light dismally. Elsewhere all was in darkness, and we lay down to sleep wondering what the morrow would bring forth. Frederick City and home were forgotten, and the thoughts that now possessed us were of marching and counter-marching, of lines of battle, of reserves, of battery ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... had countenanced, if not approved, the trial and deposition of the king, had resolutely held himself aloof from the proceedings which, beginning on Saturday the 20th of January 1649, terminated so dismally on Tuesday the 30th. The strange part played by Lady Fairfax on the first day of the so-called trial (though it was no greater a travesty of justice than many a real trial both before and after) is one of the best-known stories in English history. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... with which some working is supplied, 3 are wrong. C. H. begins with the rash assertion that under the given conditions "the sum is impossible. For," he or she adds (these initialed correspondents are dismally vague beings to deal with: perhaps "it" would be a better pronoun), "10 is the least possible number of pictures" (granted): "therefore we must either give 2 x's to 6, or 2 o's to 5." Why "must," oh alphabetical phantom? It is nowhere ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... as one could meet on a week's journey, and yet by an infelicity all class pictures are taken on its steps. Freshman courses are given in the basement—a French class once in particular. Sometimes, when we were sunk dismally in the irregular verbs, bootblacks and old-clothes men stopped on the street and grinned down on us. And all the dreary hour, as we sweated with translation, above us on the pavement the feet and happy legs of the enfranchised went by ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... seeing that her nurse still rocked dismally and looked irresolute. "I can bide my time, and fight my battles alone, if need be," she continued, coldly. "I won't trouble you again, nurse," ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Of Billy Gray of late they had seen rather too much. On one pretext after another he was now forever coming to the house, and Witchie was beginning to wish that Canker had had his way; but Canker had failed dismally. The witnesses he counted on proved dumb or departed, and it had pleased the General-in-Chief to send him with a regiment of infantry and a brace of guns to garrison an important point on an adjacent island, and to tell him that in view of the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Hamburgh, leaving his brother Anthony to the loneliness of their gloomy house in St. Mary Axe. Week after week passed away, and Mr. Peter was still detained at Hamburgh. Who would have supposed that his society could have been missed? that the parlour could have seemed more dismally dull by the absence of one of those from whom it chiefly derived its character of dulness? Mr. Anthony took up his largest meerchaum, and enveloped himself in its smoke by the hour; but the volumes of smoke cleared away, and no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... of sight, all seemed gone. The dismally-lighted city wore a look of Judgement terrible to see. Her brain was slave to her senses: she fancied she had dropped into an underground kingdom, among a mysterious people. The anguish through which action had just hurried her, now fell with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for you!" And Arbroath shook his bullet head dismally. "You are one of the unregenerate, and if you do not amend your ways will be ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... see something anon, Dick," rejoined Nicholas, with a hollow laugh, and in a dismally deep tone. "You will see Isole herself. I was foolhardy enough to invite her to dance the brawl with me. She smiled her assent, and winked at me thus—very significantly, I protest to you—and she will be as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... greys, a patch of green here and there, and all more or less dingy, and "quite out of fashion." There is a rather forlorn tone over it all, especially when we have a glimpse of Ordnance Terrace, at Chatham, that abandoned, dilapidated row where the boy Dickens was brought up dismally enough. At that moment the images of the Pickwickians recur as of persons who had lived and had come down there on this pleasant adventure. And how well we know every stone and corner of the place, and the tone of the place! ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and patched with old scraps of oil cloth—a hall that sank under one's feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light — two inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that burned blue, and sputtered, and got discouraged and went out. The porter lit it again, and I asked ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Thanksgiving Day." The big rancher shifted position, and in sympathy the rickety chair groaned dismally. "Dinner was waiting, I remember, a regular old-fashioned New England dinner with a stuffed sucking pig and a big turkey with his drumsticks in the air. Mother and Frances—that's my sister—were waiting, and they sent me running to call father. He was a lawyer, and a great hand to shut himself ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... got underway about half-past eleven; and when the little cruiser left the shelter of the cove, and once more breasted the rising and falling waves, Bumpus shook his head dismally, and loudly hoped he would not once more have to spend all his time feeding the fishes. But his fears proved groundless, for they had apparently become used to the motion of the waves, and not one of them became seasick ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... before the post was reached, Bab, blinded by tears, tripped over the root of a tree, and, rolling down the bank, landed in a bed of wet nettles. Ben had her out in a jiffy, and vainly tried to comfort her; but she was past any consolation he could offer, and roared dismally as she wrung her tingling hands, with great drops running over her cheeks almost as fast as the muddy little ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... it seemed to dislike. In depression they had shed most of their leaves; and bare serpent-branches, which might be purple with wistaria in the late spring long after everybody had gone to the north, coiled dismally over the fanlike roof of dirty glass that sheltered a blistered front door. Inside, a faint odour of mouldiness hung in the air of the rooms, which had been shut up unoccupied for a long time. The ugly drab curtains in the drawing-room smelled of the moth-powder in which they had been wrapped ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... mouth of the creek, while my pursuer, who by this time had sufficiently recovered to stagger to his feet, waded dismally back to the shore. Here he was joined by his two companions, who had evidently been following the chase with ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... when he was born his mother died, and a little later his father died also. Being thus left lonely in the world, he fell into the keeping of his uncle, Padre Juan, a grim priest who, having lost all happiness in life himself, saw little reason why he should seek to make the lives of others glad. Dismally the boy grew up in this narrow, cheerless home. The Padre fain would have made of him a priest also; but against this fate Pedro rebelled, and accepted, while yet a boy, the alternative means of livelihood that his uncle offered him in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... shoulders, bent forward his head, and croaked as dismally as ever his congeners croaked over a field of the slain in days gone by; and Yaspard nodded to him, then gave entire attention to the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... emptiness—the whole world one hollow cavern of vanity—lifeless and lightless, where the ghosts of the sorrows of men moan dismally, and the shadows of men's griefs scream out their wild agony upon the ghastly darkness! Night, through which no dawn shall ever gleam, fleet and fair, to touch with rosy fingers the eyes of a dead world and give them sight! Winter, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the hillside an owl hooted dismally, and an instant later, faint and far away, came an answer so low as ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... result we have chronicled, there would have been but one fate for Hadley, death; for even if the ruffians had left life in him, ere the lapse of three hours he would have been devoured by wild beasts, a pack of which, howling dismally, and thirsting for blood, crossed the road where he had lain, and licked up the few drops that had run ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... loungers on Montmartre and the ramparts descended into the streets—most windows in which were open, as they had been all night, with anxious female faces peering palely down-they saw the conveyances of the ambulances coming dismally along, and many an eye turned wistfully towards the litter on which lay the idol of the pleasure-loving Paris, with the dark, bareheaded figure walking beside it,—onwards, onwards, till it reached the Hotel de Vandemar, and a woman's cry was heard at the entrance—the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quivering heat and whose towering chimneys belch forth unceasingly a pall of ashes and black smoke. The steel workers and their families live as a rule in two and three family houses, built of wood, generally unpainted, and always dismally utilitarian as ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... the ranch of a sudden lonely and quiet, Tommy poked his head anxiously out through a slit in the canvas bottom of the screen door and began to cry—his poor cracked voice, all broken from calling for help from the coyotes, quavering dismally. In his most raucous tones he continued this lament for his master until at last Hardy gathered him up and held him to ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... white altar, which looked to me like a big tombstone with night-fog floating over it. Through the fog I saw two rows of wooden seats, with high backs; and in them sat men, all in black and white clothes, singing dismally. No—it wasn't singing, and it wasn't reading; but a long, rolling drawl, in which a few tones of music seemed buried and were pleading to get out. With this dreary sound, came the sobs and mournful shivers of the cold wind outside, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... you," she exclaimed, shaking her head dismally. "If you could only see the poor old creature now, so crippled up with the misery in her bones that she can't leave her chair, and nothing for her to do all day but sit and eat her heart out with longing for little Terence. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that," replied Vance, dismally; "if I must be cooked whether I like it or not, I rather think I would like to ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... tired me, and I sat rather dismally in the moonlight looking out at the closed white lilies and the swaying branches of the limes, until a text suddenly flashed into my mind, "As thy day, so shall thy strength be." I lit my candle and opened my Bible, ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... said Julia, when she had brought him back to the library fire again, and they were seated before it. "Don't you want to smoke?" He shook his head dismally, having no heart for what she proposed. "Well, then," she said briskly, but a little ruefully, "let's get to the bottom of things. Just what did you mean you had 'in black ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... edge of the alley. Not that he had moved there, oh, no! He could not have endured life if all of it that he could call his own had to be spent in that atmosphere. He still kept his little fourth floor back in the dismally respectable street. He had not gone to the place recommended by Endicott, because he found that the difference he would have to pay would make it possible for him to rent this sad little room ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... bad, O'Brien," said another scribe mournfully. "Forgive him, Senator. I will have something to say to him later." Withering glances were cast at the unlucky one, who seemed about to sink under the table, and the wind outside howled dismally, and rattled the windows ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... gals," she persisted, "that thar hain't been a death in the house sence we took him in? An' I missed my reg'lar spell o' bronchitis last winter an' this one tew—so fur," she added dismally, and began to cough and lay her hands against her chest. "That was allus the way when I was a young 'un," she continued after a while; "I never had a pet dog or cat or even a tame chicken that it didn't up an' run erway sooner or later. This here loss, gals, 'll be the death o' me! ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... he was long getting to it—the sage brush grew dishearteningly thick. Happy began to be afraid of snakes. He went slowly, stepping painfully where the ground seemed smoothest; he never could walk fifteen miles in his bare feet, he owned dismally to himself. His only hope lay ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... continued at Tafelkop, and our limbs became stiffened with the cold, some of us went to an outhouse belonging to a neighbouring farm to seek shelter. During the day we sat there in our wet clothes staring dismally out into the rain. At night we tried to warm our naked bodies by covering ourselves with the dirty wool that happened to be lying there. All the outhouses in the neighbourhood were crowded with armed burghers in tatters. On the eighth day, when the welcome sun made its appearance once more, ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... won't know where to look for us. They'll hunt in every place except the right one. No one would ever dream we were on the roof," said May dismally. ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... going to get out at six?" asked the one-eyed girl, while I glanced dismally at the never-ending train of trucks that kept rolling out upon the washers' platform, faster now than at any other time of ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... dungeons to the door which would restore to her eyes the being with whose life her existence seemed blended. The bolts had yielded to her hands. The iron latch now gave way; and the ponderous oak, grating dismally on its hinges, she looked forward, and beheld the object of all her solicitude leaning along a couch; a stone table was before him, at which he seemed writing. He raised his head at the sound. The peace of virtue was in his eyes, and a smile on ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Above the shadowy grey Council House that stood in the midst of it, the great black banner of the surrender still hung in sluggish folds against the blazing sunset. Severed rooms, halls and passages gaped strangely, broken masses of metal projected dismally from the complex wreckage, vast masses of twisted cable dropped like tangled seaweed, and from its base came a tumult of innumerable voices, violent concussions, and the sound of trumpets. All about this great white pile was a ring of desolation; ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... man so excitedly, that he stopped short for an instant, in the middle of the dismally lashing rain, and looked at her with a gleam of delight in his blue eyes. "I thought so, I saw it at the first glance. You have a sister among the lady probationers at ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... was more pleasant than ever, and when darkness fully settled down it was even thrilling. We talked about bears. Then Hal told of mountain-lions and the habit they have of creeping stealthily after hunters. There was a hoot-owl crying dismally up in the woods, and down by the edge of the river bright-green eyes peered at us from the darkness. When the wind came up and moaned through the trees it was not hard to imagine we were out in the wilderness. This had been a favorite game for Hal and me; only tonight there seemed ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... dark and massively-furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses and the heavy curtains, all affected my spirits. I was silent and sad from my childhood. There was a great clock tower above, from which the hours rang dismally during the day, and tolled like a knell in the dead of night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task of caring for her. ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... upper apartment of a cottage standing alone by the roadside on the outskirts of Boston, Miranda, pale and dejected, sat gazing vacantly at the light of the solitary lamp that lit the room. The clock was striking midnight, and the driving rain beat dismally against the window-blinds. But one month had passed since her elopement with Philip Searle, yet her wan cheeks and altered aspect revealed how much of suffering can be crowded into that little space of time. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... this and in the whole aspect of the place which astonished me greatly. If this sombre dwelling with its rich but dismally dark halls and mysterious recesses could be said to ever wear an air of cheer, the attempt certainly had been made to effect this to-day. From the hand of the bronze figure that capped the newel-post hung wreaths of smilax and a basket full of the most exquisite flowers; while from a half-open ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... afterward needed more would be issued. All in vain. The official tables of depreciation show that the assignats continued to fall. A forced loan, calling in a billion of these, checked this fall, but only for a moment. The "interconvertibility scheme" between currency and bonds failed as dismally as the "interconvertibility scheme" between currency and land had ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... silent, but outside the wind howled dismally and drove the rain with repeated assaults against the rattling windows. How nice it would be—the thought flashed through his mind—if all winds, like the west wind, went down with the sun! They made such fiendish noises at night, like the crying of angry voices. In the daytime they had such a ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... six days—Mac lost count—the transports rolled and creaked and swayed up the grey, lumpy swell, lurched over the crests and plunged away down into the troughs. The spray lifted over the bows and swept along the decks, the wind howled dismally through the rigging, and the ship was wet and comfortless. All was grey—the ships, the sky, the sea and the long trails of smoke fleeing away to leeward. Mac had found a good job on board, together with Joe of the Canterbury Squadron and Jock of his own squadron, in ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... vulgarity of Musset's perfect little work. How could quality of talent consort with so dire an absence of quality in the material offered it? where could such lapses lead but to dust and desolation and what happy instinct not be smothered in an air so dismally non-conducting? Is it a foolish fallacy that these matters may have been on occasion, at that time, worth speaking of? is it only presumable that everything was perfectly cheap and common and everyone perfectly bad and barbarous and that ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... underbred man, Miguel tried to appear unconcerned, but failed dismally. Indeed, I fear that the black eyes of Carmen had already done their perfect and accepted work, and had partly induced the application for Victor's aid. He, however, dissembled ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... sat at the window all afternoon, dismally trying to devise way of escape from the dilemma. He did not succeed. He had gone too far now to make a confession sound reasonably convincing; and he could not desert the girl to Dale. That was not to be thought of. And he was certain that if he admitted the deception, ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... disappointed over this marriage himself. He admired Forrester intensely, and had looked to him to carry through successfully a thing which he was sure must have failed dismally in the ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... toward that end of the room devoted to the users of the musical instruments. In response came a deep, resonant note from Roberta's 'cello, over which the silent bow had been for some time suspended. There followed a minor scale, descending well into the depths and vibrating dismally as it went. Louis, a mocking light in his eye, strolled down the ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... in a sloppy pile on the kitchen floor; and the vegetable rinds were left carelessly to rot in the bucket beside the sink. The old neatness and order had departed before the garments my mother had washed were returned again to the tub, and day after day I saw my father shake his head dismally over the soggy bread and the underdone beef. Whether or not he ever realised that it was my mother's hand that had kept him above the surface of life, I shall never know; but when that strong grasp was relaxed, he went hopelessly, irretrievably, and unresistingly under. In the beginning there ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... friend how delighted he was to have been asked. But just then the Cook caught sight of him, and, in his annoyance at seeing a strange Dog in the kitchen, caught him up by the hind legs and threw him out of the window. He had a nasty fall, and limped away as quickly as he could, howling dismally. Presently some other dogs met him, and said, "Well, what sort of a dinner did you get?" To which he replied, "I had a splendid time: the wine was so good, and I drank so much of it, that I really don't remember how I got out ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... dangerous innovation upon time-honored customs, which under the ante bellum regime, had kept Southern women as ignorant of practical business routine, as of the origin of the Weddas of Ceylon, Miss Patty bitterly opposed and lamented her brother's decision; dismally predicting that the result must inevitably be the transformation of their refined, delicate, clinging "Southern lady", into that abhorred monster—"a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... behave," predicted Harry dismally. "After all our trouble we shall still have to remain on guard ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... that I should myself prefer to live elsewhere, framing our household on very simple lines—and to let the power of writing come back if it would, not to try and force it. It would be a dreadful prospect to me to live thus, overshadowed by recollection, working dismally for money; but I suppose it would be possible, even bracing. Maud did not hesitate: she spoke quite frankly; on the one hand the very associations, which I dread most, were evidently to her a source of sad delight; and the thought of strangers living in rooms so hallowed by grief was ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... howled dismally about the crenellated turrets; and a row of poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil place, bent groaning before its fury. From the running waters of the moat, swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling sound that ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... rain has ceased falling, but the sky is still gray and threatening. The wind howls dismally among the old trees that surround John Burrill's shallow grave, and its weird wail, combined with the rattle and creak of the branches, and the drip, drip of water, dropping from the many crevices into the old cellar, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... had imagined his answers. Connie Edwards met Robert as he came out of the hospital gates and told him. It was raining dismally, with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded street, and she had not dressed for bad weather. Perhaps she did not admit unpleasant possibilities even into her wardrobe. Perhaps she could not afford to do so. Her thin, paper-soled shoes, with the Louis XIV heels, and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... had weighed me down when with the United Woollen. This was no waiting game. Neither your pioneer nor your true emigrant sits down and waits. Here was something which depended solely upon my own efforts for its success or failure. And I knew that it wasn't possible to fail so dismally but what the joy of the struggle ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... made from driftwood, they reached once more the outer world, having learned the lesson the Colorado is sure to teach those who regard it lightly. We made a portage at the place and enjoyed a good laugh when we looked at the vertical rocks and pictured the prospectors dismally crawling out of the roaring waters with nothing left but the clothes on their backs. Our opinion was, they were served just right: first, because they had stolen our property, and, second, because they had so little sense. The walls had rapidly grown in altitude, and near the river ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and Polly really did. Now, baby was heavy, and cross with its teeth; and Polly didn't feel like tending it one bit. Mamma hurried away to the kitchen; and Polly walked up and down the room with poor baby hanging over her arm, crying dismally, with a pin in its back, a wet bib under its chin, and nothing cold and hard to bite with its hot, aching gums, where the little teeth ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... looked at each other dismally when they had ascertained the cause of the Sky-Bird's sluggish flying. Paul and Tom even gave the craft a tentative push, and found that the loss of her helium had made her so much heavier to move over the ground that the difference was manifest ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... apart, may yet freely communicate with each other by means of subterranean river courses. I have myself followed one river course into the bowels of the earth for three miles and more, in the great Adelsberg Grotto, in Styria. I have rowed across the lake in the dismally dark cavern at Han, in the Ardennes. And even in our own Derbyshire, I have seen, half-a-mile from the entrance of the Speedwell Mine, a river, a water-fall, and a lake, all of which tell that such natural phenomena exist within the bowels of the earth as well as upon its ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... "Yes," said Cashel, dismally, "I suppose I am. I—By Jingo," he cried, with sudden animation, "perhaps you can give me a lift here. I never thought of that. I say, mamma; I am in great trouble at present, and I think you can help ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... see him safely bestowed—in the lock-up aft, and bring the key to my cabin." So at Godby's word, in came two armed fellows and marched out Resolution Day, his head still bowed and his fetters jangling dismally. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... had attended Maggie's advent into society. It was the high-flying brent who, knowing how the sensitive girl, made keenly conscious at every turn of her defective training and ingenuous ignorance, had often watched their evening flight with longing gaze, now "honked" dismally at the recollection. It was at this hour and season that the usual vague lamentings of Dedlow Marsh seemed to find at last a preordained expression. And it was at such a time, when light and water were ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... among the snow, where a keen wind was blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened the inmates of a wooden house in this solitude: round which the wind was howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling it away: we got some breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it had need to be) for keeping out the bitter storms. A sledge being then made ready, and four horses ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... house was finished he used it at its full value. Summer was gone and autumn was coming, a great rain poured and the wind blew cold. Dead leaves fell in showers from the trees, and the boughs swaying before the gale creaked dismally against each other. But it all gave to Henry a supreme sense of physical comfort. He lay in his snug hut, and, pulling a little to one side the heavy buffalo robe that hung over the doorway, watched the storm rage through the wilderness. He had ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken possession. Two dismally absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch done up in a black bandage,—as if that instrument could possibly communicate any comfort to anybody,—were posted at the front door; and in one of them I recognized a postboy discharged ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... after him with bulging eyes. Gray Stoddard married to Johnnie! He tried to adjust his dull wits to the new position of affairs; tried to cipher the problem with this amazing new element introduced. Last night's scene of violence when the injured child was brought home went dismally before his eyes. Laurella had said she would leave him so soon as she could put foot to the floor. He had expected to coax her with gifts and money, with concessions in regard to the children if it ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... grief; for in sorrow, as in joy, every Indian shares with all the others. The old women stood still, wherever they might be, and wailed dismally, at intervals chanting the praises of the departed warriors. The wives went a little way from their teepees and there audibly mourned; but the young maidens wandered further away from the camp, where no one could witness their grief. The old men joined ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... he stood watching for the one which took him nearest to his door, that he made the slight reflection with which this story opens. "Could I make a horse-car the hero of my story?" he asked himself, with a petulant tone, as he thought how dismally dull he was. The jingling car came up, and he jumped upon the rear platform, wedged his way through the men and boys who crowded the steps and platform, and so pushed into the interior. He found half a dozen men in various attitudes of neglect, but all hanging abjectly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... arisen, I began to fear that they had been driven back before it, but hoped to find them at the camp of the previous night. Pulling off the heavy boots in which I had been walking all day, I almost ran the ten miles, only to find the fishermen's hut we had occupied dismally dark and silent. Another ten miles was made in all haste, and still no signs of the party. Here, being very thirsty, I felt my way in the darkness to a spring, from which we had previously obtained good fresh water. Dipping my cup, I swallowed a hearty draught of salt water, which had ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... said Leander, dismally. "Me and Johnnie don't ask for nothin' better than to bask in each other's company; but our wives insists on keepin' up the manoeuvres of a war-dance the whole ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... warn him of impending evil. The traditions of the house told that the Barons of Duncan had again and again felt a premonition of ill fortune. Some of them had yielded and withdrawn from the venture they had undertaken, and it had failed dismally. Some had been obstinate, and had hardened their hearts, and had gone on reckless of defeat and to death. In no case had a Lord Duncan been exposed to peril ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... rocked joyously on the water; the sound of wood creaking dismally was heard, the rain fell softly on the deck, the waves beat against the sides. Everything resounded sadly like the lullaby of a mother who has lost all hope for the happiness ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are sometimes partitioned off by a screen of dried palm-leaf, but I saw no better sleeping-privilege than a board with a blanket or coverlet. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and grasping his skirts went hastily below. The mate was half lying, half sitting, in his bunk, groaning dismally. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... was still a tense feeling of dread expectation hanging like a cloud over the land. During the whole of that long night the author was an observer from an overcrowded train which left Nuremberg at 9 p.m. and rumbled dismally into Cologne the next morning at ten o'clock. Every station, great and small, was crowded with anxious, expectant crowds; the smaller stations full of spectators and relatives bidding farewell to departing soldiers, and the greater ones crowded with ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... nature of emigration. Day by day throughout the passage, and thenceforward across all the States, and on to the shores of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear and melancholy. Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. There is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as conceived at home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young man, you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to fight for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
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